Category: Cars

Ferrari 488 Spider Review The Ferrari 488 GTB is the benchmark. Ferrari’s mid-engined sports cars have been the top of the pile for decades. This latest iteration is the latest in a line that started with the 1968 Dino (don’t start). The mid-engined baby quickly became the standard, with the bigger midships V12s fading away (Aventador excepted) to front-engines. The 488 Spider is another in a rather shorter line of cars – the hardcore, mid-engined drop-top sports car from Ferrari. But it’s a line that’s as iconic as its coupes.…

The Aston Martin DB11 AMR is here to rustle your jimmies in style. Replacing the current V12 at the top of the range, the AMR trades on Aston’s formidable racing heritage. Aston Martin’s stunning new DB11 now has a new top-of-the-range model – the DB11 AMR. Packed full of the goodies we’ve come to expect from Aston – V12 engine, effortless performance, heaps of trick gear – this one is lighter, faster and even more powerful. AMR DB11 The AMR bit comes from Aston Martin Racing, a brand that has…

The Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR broke cover at the annual Wörthersee GTI festival thing and it seems it’s production ready. Volkswagen’s annual GTI Treffen, held in Worthesee, is underway and as usual, VW has dropped a concept car. Called the Golf GTI TCR, VW says the concept is the fastest GTI ever. The press release bangs on about being “near-production” but the car you see in these slick VW photos is pretty much the real thing. For serious. Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR Powered by VW’s 2.0-litre turbo four, the GTI…

Every week I like to let you know what I’m writing about normal cars (just so you know it’s not all beer and skittles) as well as articles from around the web. So let’s get cracking. Carsguide.com.au Jaguar’s XF Sportbrake was a lovely thing and I spent a week with it. Only drama was a flat tyre. I suspect a passing miscreant stabbed the tyre with something very small and very sharp. I recently drove a Subaru Liberty (aka Subaru Legacy elsewhere) for Carsguide. I liked the improvements to the drivetrain,…

The dust has barely settled on the new BMW M5’s launch, but Bavaria has already delivered the M5 Competition. Unlike previous years, this isn’t a pack – the M5 Competition is a model in its own right, just like the M2 Competition. The new beastie features more power, torque across a slightly wider rev band and a host of detail changes. Engine and Transmission The M5 Competition features the same 4.4-litre V8 but with 460kW (625PS). That’s 19kW (26PS) up on the standard car. The 750Nm torque figures stays the…

The Brabham name is back and this time it’s on a road car – the Brabham BT62. After a few false starts, experimenting with a return to racing via crowdfunding and a general struggle to make things work, this is a bolt from the blue. Over the past two months the Brabham Automotive Twitter account has been getting on with teasing the new project. We knew something was coming, but the details were scarce. Impressively so. What is it? As you know, racing cars all have codenames. Brabham was huge…

The McLaren 570S is the British company’s answer to Germany and Italy’s finest. Watch and don’t forget to subscribe to The Redline on YouTube The 570S is probably the first really McLaren car of the modern iteration of the company. Based on what the company learned from the MP4-12C, it took the good stuff and piled on more from the P1 and 650S. The result is something at once hugely surprising and completely unsurprising. History The McLaren Formula One team needs little on the way of introduction. Formed by…

BMW’s M2 Competition is here and it’s probably more than we could hope for. BMW M2 Competition No sooner had BMW’s rip-snorting M2 hit the roads we wondered what it would be like if it was closer to the M4 spec. As the bigger M3/M4 reaches the end of its life, BMW faces a bit of a hole in the go-fast line-up. Whenever a new 3 launches, the variants take a while to trickle through, the Ms coming close to last. So, as the M4 and M3 CS takes the…

I’ve been wanting to drive a Lotus Elise pretty much my whole adult life. The Lotus Elise Story Few cars have been on sale for as long as the Lotus Elise. It’s incredibly rare for a car to remain fundamentally the same for two decades. Rarer still for it to remain competitive. But Lotus isn’t your average car company, never has been, probably never will be. Despite being owned by some pretty serious industrial giants. For a start, General Motors and Toyota shared ownership for a few months in the…

Every week I like to peddle my wares from other sites as well as pointing out a few links I liked. CARSGUIDE Over at Carsguide.com.au, I’ve driven a Land Rover Discovery Sport with the top diesel engine and mid-specification HSE trim. It’s quite a thing – quick, quiet and with a decent level of equipment for the money. I just with the sat nav entry wasn’t so damn slow. I’ve also posted my first of six reports on my six months with a 2.0-litre Hyundai Kona Active with six-speed auto.…